


Once in a Lullaby

by justanothersong



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Medical Procedures, Panic Attacks, Pop Culture, Post-Recovery Bucky Barnes, Wizard of Oz References
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-04
Updated: 2016-08-04
Packaged: 2018-07-29 09:50:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7679752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justanothersong/pseuds/justanothersong
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You were born in a bunker beneath the Hydra Nemesis base in Indonesia and once you were able to walk and talk, you were moved to the Siberia base for safekeeping with a dozen or so other children. There was testing and experimentation done, and you were all kept in line by the threat of Hydra’s Winter Soldier.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Once in a Lullaby

If anyone had good reason to hate Bucky Barnes, it was you.

 

You lived the first sixteen years of your life in abject fear that you would step out of line or make some mistake that would lead those that held you to set their greatest asset upon you.

You were never really sure if you could be called a captive; you were born on a Hydra base, a part of a very well-kept secret mutagenic breeding program, pulled from your mother’s arms as soon as they were able. You never saw her after that, and you never knew your father. 

What little evidence you had been able to gather following your escape pointed towards your mother having been a captive mutant, forcibly inseminated. She had been young, only a teenager herself, and the files only referred to her as Subject A1724. Your father was Subject H8989, though his files came with a photo and a name, a Hydra foot-soldier who carried a mildly mutated recessive gene. He had been clearly dedicated to his cause, and though you had means to find him now, you never tried.

You were born in a bunker beneath the Hydra Nemesis base in Indonesia and once you were able to walk and talk, you were moved to the Siberia base for safekeeping with a dozen or so other children. There was testing and experimentation done, and you were all kept in line by the threat of Hydra’s Winter Soldier. 

When a doctor on the base stepped out of line, showing more care and comfort to you and the other children during an outbreak of measles, he was punished for his trouble. They made you all watch as the metal-armed boogeyman beat him within an inch of his life.

They reminded you that you were nothing, just tools to serve the greater cause as you grew older and your powers manifested or were forced out through extreme measures. 

They told you that if you didn’t obey, they would send the Winter Soldier to teach you a lesson.

 

At sixteen, you and a select few of your compatriots were to be transported to the Hellfire base. You’d been careful to hide the true extent of your power once it began to manifest at age eleven; they knew you could project mild telekinesis, but they had no idea how well you had learned to control it or how far-reaching it could get. On the ship to New Zealand, you and a younger boy who could conjure and throw bolts of plasma staged a mutiny and crashed the ship into a reef before reaching your destination.

You stepped out into a whole new world; it was like nothing you had ever seen before, and you were free to explore it as you chose. A long, winding road stretched out before you and there was no one forcing your step. You were free.

You and the others scattered. You never saw them again, but your own travels led you to SHIELD and, eventually, to become part of the Avengers Initiative. You were the youngest member, only 22 when the much-lauded Captain America was found frozen but still alive after so many decades.

You were the first one they expected to object when the Captain found his shattered friend, the broken and tortured army sergeant formerly known as the Winter Soldier.

They were all shocked when you were the first one to welcome him. Steve moved to stop you but you were at Bucky’s side in an instant, throwing your arms around him and just breathing out, over and over again, “You got away! You’re free!”

If anyone would understand his captivity, it was you, and from the moment he reached tentative arms around your waist, you became his protector. No one would hurt Bucky Barnes and get away with it, so far as you were concerned.

 

He seemed to regard you with something like curiosity, if not outright amazement. To him you seemed so normal, so well-adjusted; he didn’t understand how you could walk down a street, shop in a drugstore, smile at strangers passing by, when you had been born for a purpose and held as prisoner for most of your life. 

You did your best to explain it. You told him how frightened you had been, when you had first gained your freedom. How huge and terrifying the world had seemed, how strangers on the street made you nervous and fearful, as though any one of them could be a sleeper agent, there to take you back. There had been several near-misses, vile people who had sought to take advantage of your innocence, and it was only by virtue of your power that you escaped.

You told him how overwhelming it had been, a world full of lives and noise outside of your own that didn’t seem to make any sense. SHIELD had helped, once you found them -- or, rather, once they found you. They taught you how to live in a world that was still such a mystery to you and, eventually, how to protect from the same sort of people who had once treated you as a pawn, as though your life was theirs and theirs alone to control.

You told him how you had found friendship, and family among the others, all misfits in one way or another.

You told him that he would find a place there too.

 

You favorite thing to do was to fill him in on all of the wonderful things he had missed while in captivity. Music, movies, books, the changes to sport that he had missed, food and drink that had been too difficult to make or too exotic to reach him in his days as a free man.

You’d spent long afternoons just watching Bucky read the books you recommended, smiling and laughing and crying when you knew he reached the worst parts, when Sirius slipped through the veil and Tom Robinson was killed, when the other boys killed Simon in their madness and when John Coffey finally had to walk the mile. 

Steve called you Bucky’s shadow; Bucky called you his friend, and that had lit your heart up in a way you hadn’t felt before. You were glad of it, so happy to know that Bucky had found a friend, and even happier knowing that he had found one in you. 

When you brought him your paperback copy of _Of Mice and Men_ and handed it off while taking a seat on the arm of his chair, Bucky had given you a lazy smile, pushing his hair out of his eyes as he skimmed the back of the paperback.

“I remember this one, doll,” he told you with a chuckle. “There was some stuff I got to read before, you know. They didn’t have me from… well…”

And he paused, clearly feeling that he had said something wrong. You supposed he had forgotten that the world was still only a few years old to you; for much longer than that, you life had been four steel walls and a lot of marching to orders.

You reached over and patted his arm. “Don’t be silly,” you told him, shaking your head. “Wherever my life started, it certainly will end someplace much better. But, oh!” you said, standing up quickly, an idea sprung to life in your mind. “Now _you_ can teach _me_! All of the things you knew before! I can’t have found all of them yet.”

Bucky seemed uneasy. “I don’t know,” he said slowly. “I’m not sure I could remember everything…”

“You remembered George and Lennie,” you responded, and tapped a finger on the paperback novel that Bucky still held. “There must be other things. Tell me, what else is there? What should I look up, what should I learn?”

He paused a quiet moment, but then smiled again. “I guess there are a few things I can show you,” he relented.

 

Bucky taught you how to jitterbug late one afternoon, after the gym had been abandoned by Steve and the others, who seemed to prefer morning workouts. You’d never really danced before and were breathless with exhilaration after only a few minutes, laughing and stepping on Bucky’s feet and trying to mimic what he showed you. 

The slow dancing was better; you liked the way he threaded his fingers through yours and slipped an arm around your waist. You told him as much and Bucky laughed.

“I think I used to like it better too,” he said with a chuckle.

He took you out for a meal at a fast food restaurant, and though the setting was new compared to what he might have known, food was still food and he seemed certain there were things that you hadn’t tried.

Dipping a hot salty french fry in a cool creamy milkshake was a completely new experience, and you loved it. When you told him, he smiled that wry Bucky smile that felt as though he mostly reserved it just for you.

It was a nice feeling.

 

There were films you hadn’t seen yet -- there were so many of them! -- and many were new to Bucky too, so you watched them together. He was the one to suggest _The Wizard of Oz_ , and you were surprised to learn that he had already seen it. It had been on your to-do list for some time but you had thought it sounded silly.

Bucky’s surprise and insistence that “No, you have to see this one!” is what caused you to seek it out, eventually bringing a DVD copy back to the Tower. Though he had seen it already, long ago, Bucky insisted on watching it with you.

You didn’t see the way that he watched you watch the movie. When tears welled in your eyes, listening to the farm-girl’s beautiful voice as she sang _Somewhere Over the Rainbow_ , he placed a gentle hand on your shoulder and you gave him a watery smile.

When the world erupted in bright cheerful colors, you gasped in happy surprise, and you didn’t see Bucky grinning at you.

You gasped again when the Wicked Witch appeared, and when you leaned back on the couch, Bucky put his arm over your shoulders and left it there. You noticed, but you didn’t mind.

When the world turned grey again and Dorothy returned to Kansas, you began to sniffle.

Bucky said your name but you didn’t respond, eyes glued to the screen, until the film returned to the menu screener. You sighed and dabbed at your eyes with the sleeve of your sweatshirt, and Bucky looked at you curiously.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, frowning.

“How could she go back?” you replied, sniffling again. “She discovered that beautiful world, full of all that color, and made such wonderful friends… how could she leave?”

Bucky watched you a long moment before responding. “So you think Dorothy should have stayed in Oz?” he asked.

“Of course she should have stayed!” you told him. “It changed her. She wasn’t their Dorothy anymore, she didn’t belong in Kansas. She should have stayed in Oz, with the Scarecrow.”

“The Scarecrow?” Bucky echoed. He was clearly following your train of thought but you could see the surprise on his face as you spoke, his eyebrows raised as he waited for your response.

“He loved her,” you told him. “And she knew it, too. ‘I think I'll miss you most of all’. Don’t you think?”

Bucky studied your face, took a deep breath and licked his lips. Watching him made you feel warm, your cheeks heating up and a funny sort of wobble starting in your stomach, but it didn’t feel at all unpleasant. Just strange.

“You know,” Bucky said quietly. “I think you’re right.”

You couldn’t help but smile. Sometimes you got these things wrong -- you didn’t always understand the subtle nuances of films and books and music, or even day to day interactions with the friends you had made in the Tower; your experience with friendly human contact was sparse at best, and sometimes you read things wrong.

“Can we watch it again?” you asked, and Bucky smiled.

“Anything you want, doll.”

You fell asleep during the second viewing, before Dorothy had a chance to leave the Scarecrow behind. You had snuggled against Bucky in your sleep, seeking his warmth and comfort without consciously choosing it. He must not have minded; he didn’t wake you until the film had finished, softly calling your name several times before you opened your eyes.

“C’mon now,” he teased gently. “Gotta get you to bed. Been callin’ your name but you didn’t so much as blink.”

You gave him a sleepy smile. “I forget sometimes that I have a name now,” you said, and when he seemed puzzled you explained that you’d never had one before, that Hydra had only allowed you a case number: you had been AH1789 until your escape.

You’d read your name in a book and decided that you liked it well enough to keep.

Bucky had seemed horrified but you did your best to explain that it was better this way. “Some people get stuck with a name they hate and can’t get rid of, their whole lives!” you told him, stifling a yawn as he walked you back to your room. “I got to pick my very own.”

 

Bucky was the one to calm you down when Bruce first asked if he and Tony could make a study of your abilities. Logically you understood the reasoning -- they needed to know the extent of what you could do, to be sure that you wouldn’t harm yourself or anyone else accidentally one day. But still the words has called up the memories, of the brightly lit experimentation rooms and the dark, dank cells; you hadn’t even realized you had begun hyperventilating until concern crossed the doctor’s friendly features and he reached out to touch your arm.

You jerked away before his fingers reached your sleeve.

“Are you okay?” he asked, but his words sounded far away, as though echoing down a tunnel rather than standing right in front of you.

“No!” you said, voice barely above a whisper. “No test… no tests!”

Bruce’s eyes widened in surprise. “Oh… oh no, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean… wait!” he called, as you turned on your heel and ran. He shouted your name after you but you ignored him, running into a stairwell rather than waiting for an elevator, desperate to get away.

Bucky was the one who came to you, when FRIDAY located you, hiding in an empty apartment a few floors down. Tony kept it furnished in case of visitors, and you had crawled into the corner in the kitchen, wedging yourself between a cabinet and a small table and chairs; you hadn’t even bothered to turn on the lights.

Your heart was racing; you hadn’t had an episode like this in years, not since first being discovered by SHIELD. You kept trying to remind yourself that Bruce meant you no harm, that he was a friend, but his words and his lab coat combined had brought back a rush of memories that you had tried so long to forget. You were trembling and breathing hard when the apartment door opened, and you gasped out a hard breath.

It was his silhouette that did it, the shape of the man whose face you couldn’t see in the dark, the light of the corridor behind him blotting out the features you had grown so fond of and simply leaving the outline of the nightmare from your childhood. When he took a cautious step inside and called your name, the light glinted off of his metal hand and you had gasped again.

“I’m sorry!” you called out, voice pained in pleading. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to run! I’ll be good, I promise, I’ll be good!”

Bucky approached you slowly and you began to cry, but when he flipped on the kitchen light and knelt on the floor before you, you saw such hurt in his eyes that it seemed to break the spell. You were still shaky, still breathing too hard, but you knew that this was your friend, this was Bucky, and he hadn’t been sent there to hurt you.

“Oh god, Bucky, I’m sorry!” you said, and launched yourself at him, throwing your arms around his neck. The tears came harder now, and you felt him close his arms around you. 

“It’s okay,” he said softly.

“It’s not!” you told him, still clinging to him tightly. “I know you’d never hurt me. I know that. I didn’t mean it, I promise.”

He just held you, rubbed soothing circles on your back, and kept telling you that it was okay.

“Just don’t run off on me again, okay?” he told you and, trembling, you agreed.

 

Eventually, you agreed to Bruce’s request. You couldn’t help that you were nervous about it, but it did you good to have Bucky there with you, standing alongside Bruce and Tony as they took blood and checked your vitals. Though you were certain that they meant you no harm, it still made you shaky to be in any sort of testing facility, and Bucky was your rock, your anchor; as long as he was there, you knew nothing bad could ever happen to you. He wouldn’t allow it.

It was Bruce who hypothesized that you weren’t making precise movements when exerting your telekinesis, nothing so tactile as emanating from your hands or eyes, but rather that you were exuding a force from inside your brain. There was something in your motor cortex that was harnessing the electrical power of your nervous system to send out waves of force from your living energy.

Tony was the one to suggest that if you could send out these waves, you might also be able to use them in a different way, to create a sort of shield or bubble of protection around you. You started to work at that, and to find a greater means of control.

You’d taken out a few windshields and plate glass windows on occasion, and you wanted to avoid any more accidents of that nature.

 

You suppose you should have expected one day, for that boy that had helped you launch an escape to turn up again. You had thought of him often over the years; he had been younger than you, and too frightened to step foot onto another ship after your mutiny. You tried to tell him that you had to get as far away from the Hellfire base as you could, because once your captors learned of your uprising, they would be looking for you.

He had steadfastly refused, and you made the decision to leave him behind.

You had regretted it ever since.

You had hoped one day you might find him, and even poked around the internet now and again to look; you hadn’t wanted to involve the others, as it might then get SHIELD in on it, and you didn’t want him to feel compelled to follow the path you had taken. You liked your life just fine, but you knew it wasn’t for everyone.

When he showed up in New York, a grown man with horrible scars across his face and arms, you were sick over it. You kept telling the others that if you had stayed, if you had tried to help him just a little harder, maybe it wouldn’t have come to this.

Three men were dead and half a city block was destroyed. You found out later that they were Hydra sleeper agents, but what difference did it make? You had taken lives on missions, regretfully but unavoidable each time, and never out of hatred. The boy, though, had become a ruthless killer.

He had travelled with others loyal to his cause and they were wreaking havoc across the city. IT was a calculated attack that caused you and the rest of the team to separate, moving in pairs to try and take them down before more damage was caused. You had begged to be allowed to go for the ringleader; you had hoped you would be able to talk some sense into him.

Steve had only relented when Bucky agreed to partner with you.

 

You came upon the boy -- really not a boy anymore but, like you, he had no name when you parted ways -- standing atop a recently crashed taxi in midtown Manhattan. People all around were running and screaming, and he watched them with a blank face, throwing the occasional handful of hot plasma in the direction of men in business suits, never even blinking at the small explosions and rain of broken pavement. He was outside a financial firm, one that Tony had long ago uncovered as funneling cash into Hydra’s organization; the team had chosen to keep watch and follow the money, to garner more intel rather than accuse them outright.

The boy had found the same connection, and had chosen a different path.

His eyes seemed to light up when he saw you, and for a moment there seemed the barest hint of a smile on his scarred face. But when Bucky sidled up beside you, at the ready to attack if necessary, his expression changed.

You dodged the first plasma burst, knocking it away with the force of your own power and letting it fall into a sewer grate; the ground trembled with the force of it but no one was hurt. The second one would have caught you, if Bucky hadn’t pulled you out of harm’s way first.

“Get away from him!” the boy shouted to you. “Get away from him and you can walk away!”

“Stop this!” you shouted back. “This isn’t how to make things right! We can help you, but you have to stop!”

“No!” he told you, shaking his head. “They have to pay! For what they did you me, for what they did to us! Don’t you understand?”

“This won’t change anything,” you told him, shaking your head. “All you’re doing is proving them right -- making people believe you’re a monster! They tried to turn us into that, to use us as weapons, and look how you’ve played right into it!”

“No!” he shouted back, not even hearing your words. “Get away from him, let me end this and you can go!”

Bucky tried to push you away. You could see his eyes had gone pained, his face blank; he thought he deserved it. He wanted you to leave him there to face down what he felt he had wrought.

“No!” you called, as much to Bucky as to the boy wielding heated energy in his hands. “I won’t! You have to stop!”

“How could you?” the boy said, practically glaring through you. “How can you protect him? After everything he did! After everything we saw him do! He’s one of them, and he deserves to die!”

“He does NOT!” you thundered back, angry now for the first time since you confronted the boy. “He was never one of them! He’s one of us, he’s always been one of us, can’t you see that?”

He shook his head, and pulled the hand from behind his back that you hadn’t even realized he had been hiding. He had been holding his plasma there, allowing it to grow bigger and burn hotter where you couldn’t see, stalling to allow for it. You had only seconds to act, and you did the only thing you could think to do.

You had been training for weeks, testing out your powers, trying to make them obey you just as you wanted. Your shields had been small, and weak, but you had been able to at least produce them. There was always a weak spot, usually at your back; whatever you were battling needed to be in front of you for the shield to be at all effective. 

Without hesitation, you threw every last bit of your strength into creating the strongest shield you could, and when the boy threw his projectile, you turned to the side and threw your arms around Bucky.

It hit you on your side and shattered your shield, though the force of it breaking seemed to lob the ball of heated energy backwards. It had hit you, charring your clothing and burning your skin, before bouncing back towards its source. You heard the boy scream, but you didn’t see him fall; you were already fading, the horrific stench of your own burnt flesh filling up your senses as you collapsed hard against Bucky.

 

Everything was hazy. You could hear people still screaming and the sound of motors in the air, but you still felt a strange sense of peace. Bucky was on the ground and you were in his lap, his metal arm stretched across your wounded side; you had the feeling that he was holding you together, but you barely felt the pain, too far away from it all now.

He was saying your name, over and over, telling you to hold on, that help was coming, that you would be just fine once they got you somewhere safe.

You didn’t believe him, but you smiled, tasting blood in your throat.

“Okay,” you told him. “I’ll hold on. Just a little while.”

“No, baby, you gotta stay with me,” he told you, and your smile grew just a little. _Baby_. He had never called you that before. You’d imagined it once or twice, when the two of you were alone together, what it might be like. It was nice to hear it.

“It’s okay,” you told him, and shook your head, wincing at the pain it caused you. “It was so nice, Bucky. I got away. I got to see all of... the pretty colors.”

“It’ll still be nice. It’ll be even better,” Bucky told you, and he wiped his thumb across your lips. You saw the blood on his hand, bright and vibrant red, but it didn’t bother you. It didn’t hurt. “There’s so much more we still gotta do, hey? Stay with me now. We’ll get you somewhere safe.”

“It was… so nice,” you told him again. You were fading now, you could feel that. The pain was eating at the edges of your consciousness and you knew you would have to leave soon. It was getting harder to talk, harder to breathe. Everything tasted so slick and copper.

“C’mon now, no running off again,” he told you, and you gave a weak chuckle.

“N-no.. run,” you agreed. Your cheeks were wet; you realized you were crying. You closed your eyes for a moment, feeling so very tired now, and your head lolled back against Bucky’s arm. 

You felt his body stiffen against you, and his voice took on a sharp note of panic when he called your name again and said “No! Please!”

You opened your eyes again and saw the fear on his face, but you smiled. Because he was there. He was the one holding you, and if you’d had to choose, you would have chosen for it to go this way. You tried to tell him, but it was so hard to talk now. You were so tired.

You reached up with one trembling hand to touch his face, running your cold fingers over his stubbled cheek and sighing softly at the funny, prickly feeling. 

You knew you had to tell him now. It had to be now, or you would never have the chance. He should know, he deserved that much. But it was so hard to talk, and you were so tired; your mind was fuzzy, the right words hard to find as you grasped for them.

You coughed twice, tasting copper again. Images floated in and out of your mind but you tried to focus, tried to coalesce your thoughts into something real, something concrete.

“C’mon, just a little while longer,” Bucky told you. The drone of engines in the air was getting closer and you felt a hot, mad bubble of laughter float from your lips. Wherever could they land?

You smiled up at Bucky, a real, bright smile, even as tears ran from your eyes. Still touching his face, you whispered, “I think I'll miss you most of all.”

Bucky barked out a laugh that sounded more like a sob, and the world went bright and hazy again. You closed your eyes to blot it out, and knew no more.

 

“It’s not the burns that are really of any concern,” you heard a vaguely familiar voice speaking somewhere out in the dark. Your head was pounding and you couldn’t seem to move, or even open your eyes, but you could heard the voices.

“It was more the force of the blast that created the problem,” the feminine voice continued and after a long moment, you recognized her as Helen Cho, a doctor working in the medical unit at the Tower. “The rib fracture is severe and her lung was greatly damaged. Lucky that it wasn’t her other side. It would have caused a puncture to her heart.”

“So it did puncture her lung?” a male voice asked, and you didn’t even have to think on who it might be; it had become as familiar to you as your own.

“Bucky?” you said, but it’s so low and rough and garbled over the tube in your throat that they can’t hear you.

“She suffered a pneumothorax, yes,” Dr. Cho agreed with him. “We were able to reinflate her lung and repair some of the damage surgically, but the bruising has to run its course. Now we can only wait, see if she starts breathing on her own, regains consciousness. With that sort of hypoxia, we can’t know how it affected her brain.”

“All we can do is wait,” Bucky said, not asking this time, and sounding resigned to it.

“I’m sorry, Sergeant Barnes,” Dr. Cho told him. “I really am. I know you’ve been down here most of the week already, I wish there was more that I could tell you.”

“Thank you,” Bucky replied, heaving a deep sigh. “For - for taking care of her.”

You could hear the sad smile in Dr. Cho’s voice. “I’ll do my best,” she told him.

You struggled to move, forcing your eyes open and just as soon squeezing them shut again. You gave it a second and squinted them open, trying to adjust to the light, and tried to take a deep breath. You immediately gagged, remembering there was a tube forced down your throat and started to struggle, pulling at cords and tubes and trying to get your hands up to free yourself. 

The machines around went off in a flurry of alarms and suddenly there were feet stampeding your way, and there was Dr. Cho, trying to talk to you, nurses trying to hold you down, which only made you struggle further. And then there was Bucky, there at your shoulder, warm hand touching but not holding you back.

“Calm down,” he said, trying to keep his voice low and soothing. “You gotta calm down, doll, let the doctor do what she needs to do, okay? Just hold on tight for a second, she’s gonna take it all off for you, okay? Gotta let her work.”

And you nodded, best as you could, and let the doctor look in your eyes with a pen light before she unwound some sort of plastic cover from your mouth.

“I need you to take a deep breath, and then cough for me, alright? On three… one… two…” Dr. Cho instructed.

You coughed hard on your count and you felt the unnerving sensation of the plastic tubing being pulled out of your esophagus. It felt like it would go on forever until it was suddenly gone, and you coughed again and dropped your head back onto the pillow. The doctor was checking your vital, watching the rate of the oxygen in your blood on a monitor next to the bed, but you weren’t at all worried. 

All that mattered was that you were awake, and Bucky was there. You said his name, voice rough and cracked, and the relief you saw in his expression flooded you with something close to happiness. You reached up with one hand and touched his face, like you had when you were laying in his arms, waiting for the end. He smiled and nuzzled into your palm, kissing your warm fingertips.

“Welcome back to Oz,” he said softly.


End file.
